Operation Protective Edge has resulted in the deaths of more than 1,400 Palestinians in recent weeks, compared with 56 Israeli soldiers and four civilians. It’s long past time for Israel to consider a two-state solution, stop the creeping encroachment of the occupation, and end a blockade that “ensures that ever more Palestinians grow up angry,” The Economist writes.

Henry Siegman was born in Germany three years before the Nazis came to power in 1933. In a two-part interview with “Democracy Now!,” he discusses the Israeli assault on Gaza, the myths surrounding Israel’s founding in 1948, and his evolution from German-Jewish refugee to leading voice among American Jews and vocal critic of Israel’s policies in the Occupied Territories.

Fifty reservists in the Israeli military—the majority of them women—have written an open letter expressing opposition to the institution’s discriminatory culture and policies, the current operation in Gaza, and the militarization of their society.

Incapable of thinking beyond military solutions to social problems, militarism absolves individuals and governments, if not the public, of the horror produced by the weapons it builds. Moreover, just as it erases the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it suggests that the killing of hundreds of children in Gaza is a necessity.

The tone of the White House and some of Israel’s other Western allies shifted slightly Monday from unequivocal support to “concern for the growing number of casualties” and calls for an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Hamas as the Palestinian death toll in the now two-week operation by the Netanyahu administration climbed to 548.

As reports appear of some Israelis gathering on hillsides to watch and cheer the military strikes on Gaza, Secretary of State John Kerry is said to have expressed frustration with the operation in comments intended only for an aide.

Barring the increasingly influential isolationist/tea party wing of the American electorate, opinion is and always has been that the United States is the messenger of democracy to a world that usually hasn’t earned it and probably doesn’t deserve it.

Fatah and Hamas, the two Palestinian factions that have for the last seven years ruled the separate territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, announced Wednesday they will form a unity government.

The former Israeli prime minister turned “the two-state solution into a cloud of dust,” Palestinian political scientist and former minister of the Palestinian Authority Ali Jarbawi writes in The New York Times.

Perhaps the most famous living scientist is backing out of a major conference in Jerusalem over Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Stephen Hawking came under pressure from an international campaign, but says he made the decision after hearing from his contacts in Palestinian academia.

Swiss, French and Russian scientists will conduct tests on samples taken from the body of Yasser Arafat, the first Palestinian Authority president whose official cause of death eight years ago is listed as stroke, but whose personal items were found to contain traces of polonium-210.

The drama unfolding in Gaza seems numbingly familiar. This time, however, there’s a big and potentially tragic difference: Not even the actors—Palestinians and Israelis—can possibly know how it will turn out.

Health officials quoted by The Guardian said that of the 21 Gazans killed in Israeli airstrikes Sunday, nine were children and four were women. Haaretz reports meanwhile that “the Israel Defense Force is continuing its intensive preparations for the ground phase of Operation Pillar of Defense.”

“She did not distance herself from the area, as any thinking person would have done,” said a judge in Haifa, Israel, ruling against the family of Rachel Corrie, the American activist who was crushed while standing between an Israeli bulldozer and a Palestinian home in 2003.

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are scheduled to meet in Jordan on Tuesday, but don’t expect fireworks. Nothing has changed since Palestinians threw up their hands at continued Israeli settlement construction.

Israeli Ambassador Nimrod Barkan huffed and puffed after his country’s Palestinian colony was admitted into the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on Monday. Washington, bound by law, promised to cut off all U.S. funding for the organization, whose mission “is to contribute to the building of peace.” (more)

Last week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: The Rev. Madison Shockley made a pilgrimage to Liberty Square, Dr. Marcia Dawkins traveled to the Holy Land, Reese Erlich reported from recently bombed Turkey and we compared Obama’s jobs bill to the WPA.